I understand President Obama is going to announce an “accommodation” to the demands of the Catholic Church and media regarding US health care. I’ll wait and see what he says, and if I have time today I’ll try to figure out how this accommodation might affect me and mine. I don’t know that I’ll be around at 11 for the announcement.
I’m not really surprised he’s compromising. The church planned the political campaign 7 months in advance of the (alleged) “firestorm”, so there was always an end game here.
I am grateful to him for making the public health argument on my behalf. As far as I’m concerned, he was the only person operating out of a genuine concern for women’s health, rather than treating women’s health as a political football or proxy for some other, unrelated, larger moral or political crusade.
He did his job, and he acted in good faith, which is more than I can say for the bishops and their multi-millionaire media mouthpieces. On that, I have to say, I haven’t seen the multi-millionaire cable tv stars and media personalities this incensed in years, back since they were selling the invasion of Iraq. Who knew they were so vitally concerned with limiting access to contraception? Eye-opening, to say the least. Do you think we get them on board to lobby this hard to help working people? They’re impressive when they join together and link arms in a campaign like this. I see a lot of potential for good there.
Here are some facts that might be useful if you are not a bishop or multi-millionare pundit or media personality, and rely on employer-provided health insurance for prescription drugs. Despite misty-eyed and nostalgiac notions of priests toiling in storefront clinics , the Catholic Church plays a huge and growing role in the mulit-billion dollar industry that is US health care. They are the very definition of a large employer that the health care law was intended to regulate.
Catholic Healthcare West, one of the nation’s largest hospital systems, is ending its governing board’s affiliation with the Catholic Church and changing its name, two steps intended to help the system expand throughout the states in which it operates — California, Arizona and Nevada — and beyond.
The changes, which executives announced today, underscore the unique challenges facing Catholic hospitals in the marketplace, where there are tremendous financial pressures for hospitals to merge or form formal alliances with other health care providers in order to survive and thrive. The change will have no effect on any patients or the medical care provided at the 25 Catholic and 15 secular hospitals in the system. But executives hope it will make it easier to merge or affiliate with other hospitals, doctors’ practices and other health care providers.
In the past few years, proposed mergers between Catholic and secular hospitals in Louisville, Ky., and Sierra Vista, Ariz., have collapsed in part because of concerns about the church’s bans on abortions, in-vitro fertilizations and sterilizations. Other mergers have succeeded only with the help of unusual contortions, such in Troy, N.Y., where a separately licensed maternity ward free from Catholic doctrine was created on the second floor of a secular hospital taken over by a Catholic system. In Seattle, Swedish Medical Center last fall agreed to fund a Planned Parenthood office next door to quell objections about its planned affiliation with a Catholic system
The San Francisco-based system, which has $11 billion in revenues, making it the fifth largest in the country, is seeking to triple in size and build a national footprint. It treated 6.2 million patients last year.
Catholic Healthcare West leaders said the change has been in development since 2009, when it was raised by the sisters. They said they consulted with Archbishop George Niederauer of San Francisco and he determined the governance change was consistent with the church’s teachings and that it could proceed. Future secular hospitals added to the system will be required to adhere to the “Statement of Common Values” that apply to Catholic Healthcare West’s secular hospitals. In addition to elective abortions, those rules prohibit in-vitro fertilizations but not sterilizations such as tubal ligations.
The system’s Catholic hospitals will continue to adhere to Catholic directives and have relationships with the religious orders of nuns that governed the system. Those orders will retain final authority should Dignity want to sell a hospital, change its name or make other substantial alterations. In addition, the secular hospitals will continue to adhere to some rules based on church doctrine, such as a ban on abortions except when a mother’s life is in danger.
“It’s more like two families under one roof as opposed to ‘you have to join our family,'” said Martin Arrick, a managing director at the rating agency Standard & Poor’s. “If this proves to be successful—and I have no reason to think it won’t be—I think you’re going to see a wave of Catholic and non-Catholic partnerships.”
How big is this regulatory exception church leaders and pundits are demanding? How many working people will it involve? When a multi-billion dollar Catholic health care business merges with a multi-billion dollar secular health care business, are all of the people employed there now subject to the restrictions on access to contraceptives?
If the church and their media allies blow a hole in the regulatory scheme of the PPACA can we expect other large employers to demand waivers? The church’s lawyer said yesterday that he was lobbying to remove contraception from the list completely. If he succeeds at that, what other provisions related to women’s health might he succeed in removing? Any other anti-regulatory campaigns they’re cooking up? People out here in the cheap seats might need this information.
None of these questions were even asked. Ordinary working women had no role, at all, in a debate that was just conducted on their health care, but we did have the President of the United States and his HHS director working on our behalf, and that’s heartening.
Warmongerer
I’m guessing the “accommodation” will be something like being able to request a waiver for an additional year at the end of the first one. The waiver, of course, will be denied once election season is past.
As usual, Obama will give the public impression of being an adult who’s willing to work with people on a compromise (with all the attendant screeching from the clueless blogosphere types) while doing very little to actually compromise.
shortstop
I can feel (and share) the depth of your frustration.
And I commend and am grateful to you for all your work.
Bulworth
At the outset I thought the administration’s position was risky and could easily be seen by lay Catholics, once prompted by their leaders, as an infringement on religious liberty. That the administration didn’t seem to have a response here is really puzzling. They’re usually more politically astute than this, more long game oriented.
But I agree the instant collective freakout by the Village, White Male chapter, was even more bizarre and troubling. Add to that that I don’t have any admiration for the No Sexytime For Women Allowed position of the RCC, I would have liked to have seen the administration make some stand here.
Jeff Fecke
It sounds like this is going to be mostly semantic; insurance companies will be required to provide contraceptive care (they want to; it’s cheaper for them); if the church wants to deny contraceptive care on the policies they purchase, then the insurance companies will step in and provide it at no additional charge. It won’t affect a single woman (or man) who needs contraceptive coverage, it allows churches a “fig leaf,” and it makes Obama look reasonable.
And sure, the church will keep howling, because their goal is actually to ban contraceptives. But they can keep howling, and keep shedding members.
OzoneR
The Accommodation doesn’t sound much like an accommodation, sounds like an attempt to get this off the news pages and change the subject. The more this is debated, the less likely it is we win this. People’s opinions are heavily influenced by the bias of the media (healthcare reform anyone?) and the more the media presents angry Catholics and knife-in-back liberals saying this is a travesty, the more people will be influenced to think it is.
dr. bloor
Contemporary health care delivery is incompatible with adherence to the twisted values of old white guys who justify their anachronistic, misogynist fantasies to an invisible sky-guy. The Catholic Church couldn’t even keep St. Vincent’s open in NYC. This expansionary-partnership stuff isn’t going to work anyplace else, either.
The Other Bob
@Jeff Fecke:
Most larger employers are likely self-insured. They might have an insurance company administer their coverage for a fee, which would include bill processing, price negotiation, etc, but the actual bill for the care is paid directly by the employer. In this case, the insuarance company cannot provide something for “free”.
mass
Did anyone bother to check with the females in decision-making positions within the Catholic Church?!? Ha.
Hey, maybe this’ll be what Romney needs to bring back poligamy!
El Tiburon
And from Hamsher’s Devil Hole:
You make the call.
Trentrunner
I hope even if contraception ends up not being covered by these Catholic institutions’ policies, I do hope they still cover GETTING THE ANAL BLOOD OF A 7-YEAR OLD OUT OF YOUR PRIEST’S FROCK.
Rome Again
For those who don’t know, the reason for Dignity being created was due to a situation at a Catholic hospital here in Phoenix (the hospital is about four blocks from where I’m sitting right now), due to having to perform a termination of pregnancy to save the mother’s life. The hospital was stripped of it’s Catholic status.
MJ
Thank you Kay for your thoughts on this. I really appreciate your efforts to clarify this issue for folks in this community.
Villago Delenda Est
@Warmongerer:
It’s my hope that is the “compromise”.
FUCK the boy buggering garbage that is the USCCB.
Kay
@shortstop:
It’s good, in a way. One has to know what they’re up against.
I just read an entire NYTimes article on this, and there is not a single mention of 1. women, 2. health care, 3. contraception, 4. the current state of the law or, 5., the employees of large Catholic businesses.
If you had told me 5 years ago we’d have a debate on women’s health care and the single individual that considered “women” and “health care” in that analysis would be the President of the United States I would not have believed you.
Just amazing.
If I have to have only ONE advocate, and it seems I only get one, I’ll take THAT advocate :)
Frankensteinbeck
@Warmongerer:
Despite the ‘Obama caves’ narrative, he has a remarkable tendency to come out of compromises giving away nothing of any value at all. About all the GOP has gotten from him was a temporary extension on the Bush tax cuts, he got a Hell of a lot for it, and let’s face it – that’s the GOP’s absolute top priority, the ONLY thing they really care about.
Tom W
Someone might want to note that the big, bad Catholic healthcare system serves the poor and uninsured in higher percentages than the for-profit health industry. Doesn’t change this issue at all, but it’s worth noting for liberals, I think.
kvenlander
That NYT article explains some of the intensity and speed of their response. I suspect Village catholic pundits were primed about it as well.
And I have to wonder if SKG people were part of it and hoping to start an avalanche against PP in the midst of it all.
Maybe I’m giving them too much credit for competence though.
kindness
Contraception is one issue that has broad consensus. That agreement is not reflected by the Catholic Church’s leaders, the ‘concerned’ MSM ‘serious’ talking heads nor the always shrieking right in America today.
That being the case it would seem this is one area the Democratic Party and Barack Obama would be able to bulldoze their way to a win. Why the President feels he can’t strap on his gloves and pummel the opposition, I just don’t get. Either his trusted advisors are scared of any confrontation or the President himself doesn’t have the fire in his belly for the fight that’s needed to win in 2012.
I thought he had found that fire. I hope he has. I hope I’m wrong about my doubts about him.
redshirt
@Kay: That one, you mean?
OzoneR
@El Tiburon:
Well, see, here’s a way to solve the problem. If you’re a woman who wants birth control, boycott the Catholic Church. Do not give them money, do not go to church. I resigned and wrote a letter stating so to the bishop
I’m not saying I agree with them, but when Catholic bishops walk into a cathedral and see no one in the pews, like they do in Europe, maybe they’ll rethink their positions.
Keith G
Yes he does act in good faith. I hope that will be enough.
El Tiburon
The last two paragraphs were supposed to be block quoted as well, stupid balloon juice
Benjamin Franklin
I know it would be a bridge too far, in an election year, for the issue of Churches engaged in political activity. There are some proscribed behaviors for retention of non-profit status…
http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=163395,00.html
beltane
My grandmother (not the Catholic one) is nearly 100 years old. Her first job out of college was with the American Birth Control League, the precursor to Planned Parenthood. At the time they were looking for young, attractive, married women with a background in science to work with GPs in distributing contraceptive devices to married women. She loved her work but the job was short-lived. Thanks to the efforts of the Catholic bishops the program was axed and it would be many more years until birth control once again became something women could obtain through their doctor without shame or fear.
What disgusts me the most about this is not the bishops, who have tread the path of evil since the time of Constantine,, but our so-called allies in the media. These men are liberals concerning issues related to men but no better than Rick Santorum when it comes to issues relating to women. Their “liberalism for me, servitude for thee” makes them every bit of our enemy as the assholes on Fox News.
Rome Again
@Tom W: If they serve secular society (and they do, I’ve sought treatment at St. Joseph’s here in Phoenix) then they ARE secular. If they want to be a church, they need to stop employing and serving secular society and leave that to other entities instead.
Guster
Do Jews who work for Catholic hospitals deserve worse healthcare than Catholics who work at Jewish hospitals?
Accepting the current framing of this issue is political malpractice.
Kay
@El Tiburon:
El Tiburon, I don’t know how long you’ve been watching, but in my memory no President has ever bucked them before.
If he fails, he fails. You can’t ask people to fight for you and then abandon them when they fail. They won’t fight for you.
If he takes them on, and he did, back him up. You saw what they threw at him. Trying counts. Taking a risk counts.
shortstop
@Jeff Fecke:
A lot of people keep saying this, but it wasn’t until the 2000 change in the law that I ever had contraceptive coverage (and I’ve worked for both Catholic and secular companies and organizations). The same is true for most of my female friends.
Pregnancies have always been more expensive than contraception, but it’s just not true that insurance companies have wanted to cover BC pills all along. They operate on the assumption that while individual pregnancies are costly, only a certain number of women will be pregnant at any given time and that others will be willing to pay for the pill or other forms of contraception out of pocket to avoid pregnancy. I assume insurance companies thus save more by not covering contraception for many millions of women.
geg6
@Tom W:
Fuck them. I don’t give them an inch or an ounce of credit for anything. They are evil, evil, evil, evil. And fuck you for even thinking they might deserve any cover at all on their evil.
The Moar You Know
The Church will squall….like they always do. In the end, everyone’s going to get covered regardless.
The weird “ethical” restrictions of the Catholic church will ensure that they can’t survive as a provider of health care in the 21st century. Already most of their hospitals are secularized to at least some extent. They’ll be out of that business altogether in a few more years, with their sole remaining involvement with healthcare being that of landlord.
OzoneR
@Guster:
My question is, why would a Jew work at a Catholic hospital?
beltane
@OzoneR: They haven’t re-thought their positions in Europe. It’s just that the Europeans no longer give a sh*t about what those positions are.
Villago Delenda Est
@OzoneR:
I doubt it. They’ll continue to live high on the hog off of centuries of accumulated loot. The parish priests and the nuns might suffer, but not bishops, archbishops, or cardinals.
beltane
@OzoneR: For a paycheck?
OzoneR
@beltane:
No, they certainly haven’t and continue to suffer there because of it. Which is why they spend all their time evangelizing Africa and keep people as poor and ignorant as possible in Latin America and inject their beliefs into politics here.
OzoneR
@beltane:
there are plenty of other places to get a paycheck in the healthcare industry without having to adhere to the rules of a church that tried for millenia to wipe you off the map.
El Tiburon
@OzoneR:
What if I’m an agnostic male and I would like to see Obama start standing up for the American people – male and female.
Bailouts for every single goddamn constituency in this nation except for the working shmos. There is no fucking reason for ANY compromise on this matter. NONE. Goddamn, I would like to see this feckless bastard would fight as hard for middle-America as he does for the elites and the wealthy.
I guess Obama had no choice but to compromise, right Balloon Juicers? No choice.
jsfox
The church has already spoken today re the compromise and they aren’t buying.
One of The Bishops on Morning Joke’s response and I quote:
“That’s like a school who is told that they don’t have to allow kids to view porn on the internet, but they’re required to refer them to a place where they can view porn.”
The president is now free to tell the church to pound sand.
shortstop
@OzoneR: Because he or she is more interested in practicing medicine than in who owns the outfit? Because he or she started with another healthcare organization that was swallowed up by a Catholic healthcare system? Do you have any idea how many non-Catholics work at Catholic hospitals and universities?
ETA: Re your “there are plenty of other places to work” comment, I’m going to assume you’re ignorant of just how consolidated healthcare systems have become, and how few places serve many rural and even some suburban areas.
Guster
@OzoneR: Um, to offer oncology services to patients with cancer? To help people get appropriate prosthetics? To get a good job as a surgical nurse or receptionist or janitor?
I don’t really understand that question. You’re aware that the majority of employees of, say, Mt. Sinai aren’t Jews, and the majority of employees at Mercy Hospital here in my hometown aren’t Catholics?
Kay
@beltane:
Me too. I love how they’re all gung ho for battle unless it involves people they know personally.
It had such a loathsome “insider” air, like they were all excitedly calling each other. Just a disgusting display. A closed circle of millionaires, talking exclusively to one another
Schlemizel
@Kay:
I might have believed it because I thought there was a chance Hillary would be Prez 8-{D
Southern Beale
See, this is the thing. As these religious institutions try to exert MORE control politically, they actually weaken themselves, because they’re trying to expand their business interests in the secular sphere. We have Catholic hospital chains cutting ties with the church and we have Baptist universitites cutting ties with the Southern Baptist Convention.
Religion is dying and all of the teeth-gnashing we’ve seen is a reaction to it. It will all be over in about 20 years.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
It’s a shame that you need a prescription for birth control.
It would be amusing if these all-male Catholic pundits and bishops came to work one day to find their mailboxes stuffed with packages of pills, IUDs and diaphragms from all over the country.
beltane
@jsfox: Something about the last pundit being strangled with the innards of the last priest comes to mind. Somewhere out there, Voltaire is having a little chuckle to himself.
OzoneR
@El Tiburon:
how isn’t he?
r€nato
I’ll just echo what others have stated: the Catholic church hierarchy doesn’t give a shit about public opinion or Catholics voting with their feet. They didn’t for two millennia and they aren’t about to start now.
El Tiburon
I think what Obama is about to do is punt on 3rd down.
OzoneR
@r€nato:
Then Catholic voters should stop giving a shit about the hierarchy.
Baud
@El Tiburon:
Then take off your blinders. If you want to know who is responsible for conservative power, look in the mirror.
The Moar You Know
We are talking about an organization of dress-wearing men – and not even decent dresses, mind you, but some shit that looks like they cut down the curtains at a Motel 6 – whose sole contribution to society at this point is providing work for innumerable therapists trying to undo the damage of decades of LITTLE BOY RAPE.
Chris
@beltane:
No, but they also haven’t picked fights like this with European governments because they know that they’d lose. Because, as you said, the people over there don’t give a frakk what they have to say.
It’ll be a happy day when American churches have been as completely defanged as the European kind.
Chuck Butcher
@OzoneR:
Maybe you ought to take a look at areas served by Catholic Hospitals before you start poking keys. It is 45 miles and mountain passes one direction to a non-Catholic hospital from here and forget any other direction unless over 100 miles is in your agenda. So if you live here guess what hospital you can work at?
GregB
The depth of my disgust for E.J. Dionne and Chris Matthews knows no bottom.
El Tiburon
@OzoneR:
Check out Obama’s economic team. Then check out the bonuses and profits and lack of jail time for the 1% who cratered our economy. Check out the lack of perp walks or any serious investigations into this.
Now, check out the struggling working class losing their homes, without insurance, having to go to food banks. Check out the wealthy continuing to have special justice while average Americans continue to be burdened by college loans, diminished wages, loss of insurance and increased poverty.
Then ask yourself: what exactly has Obama done to help the working class and poor? Oh, yeah, ACA right? Yeah, not so much as we still have millions without healthcare, yet insurance profits continue to soar.
You tell me: what has he done for the working class? And does it even come close to what he has done for the wealthy?
Tom65
The Catholic church I grew up in was much more progressive and way less politicized. I was taught by nuns to challenge authority and think for myself, and that the primacy of conscience was an absolute. This Opus Dei version of the church sucks ass.
shortstop
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
The pill has some pretty significant effects on one’s endocrinology, as well as some health risks that need to be monitored. Besides, selling it over the counter wouldn’t necessarily bring the price down, as we’ve seen with other drugs.
Still, I take your point and will indulge in a little fantasy of bishoply faces turning scarlet and clerical veins bursting as the old boys watch America’s women casually flip them off on their way to Walgreen’s. Ah, that was fun.
gelfling545
You know it seems to me that an answer for the churches would have been to provide NO prescription care and instead give a flex spending account from which to pay for prescriptions, etc. That way no particular designation is made except that it’s health care related. Some folks I’ve known have had insurance with relatively high deductible but with a fairly high flex spending account which effectively covered the “non-covered” expenses. There would, of course be no drama attached to such a move and the church wouldn’t get to control their employees’ spending but even when employees pay out of pocket for birth control they are getting the money from the church. Maybe they need to need to review their employees’ personal budgets as well.
Felanius Kootea
I’ve seen enough of Obama’s “compromises” to be pretty sure that women will get contraceptive coverage. And I don’t know any women who are with the Bishops on this one, but then again, I’m not Catholic. I do know women who will be motivated to go vote because of this issue and the Republicans should be very careful here.
Hoodie
@El Tiburon: Could be but, based on past experience, he’s setting up for a field goal on 4th and 4 and looking to draw the other time offsides, which appears to be happening. All of a sudden, we’re talking culture wars and Rick Santorum. As Edroso says, “well played, Black Hitler!”
El Tiburon
@Baud:
Do you enjoy spouting off without making any fucking sense at all? I am responsible for conservative power? Because I voted for Obama? Or…or…or, is it we are not supposed to criticize Dear Leader? What are you talking about?
Kay
@El Tiburon:
Whatever, El Tiburon. I don’t know what “punt on third down” means, anyway.
He made the argument, and (maybe) he got beat. Again, you can’t tell people to go out there and fight and then immediately take the critic role when they lose.
No one wins everything. There’s risk in everything. Sniping at people who take risk on your behalf just reinforces the idea that no one should bother.
If you want to have these battles, get used to losing, because we’ll lose more than we’ll win.
shortstop
@Tom65: Remember when they used to talk about serving the poor? Seems so quaint now.
El Tiburon
@Kay:
Giving up before you need to.
I don’t even know what you are talking about really. Obama is not fighting. He is capitulating. He is using woman’s health as a political football. He is punting before he has to so as not to have to fight the battle.
Having convictions means shit if you don’t stand up for them. It seems all we care about is where Obama starts, not where he ends up – usually without even going to battle for it (cough cough Public option cough cough)
beltane
@GregB: May they be cursed with impotence for the remainder of their days, and if they take boner pills may they be cursed with a 24 hour erection.
nastybrutishntall
Obamacave (NYT).
Even if it is a technicality, it sucks. But I guess having YellowBelly Dems running for cover, and “liberal” Catholics whining gave him no choice.
jurassicpork
“CPAC is always like an inverted Nuremberg, with the Party of Personal Responsibility playing the Nazi defendants. Imagine what Nuremberg would’ve been like if the Nazis had somehow taken control of the courtroom then condemned the Jews and the American military tribunal in absentia after bunkering themselves in. That’s essentially what CPAC is: a gilded sub-Reichstag bunker with 5 star food and chandeliers. And endless entertainment.”
El Tiburon
@Hoodie:
Perhaps you could refresh on these past field goal on 4th? The time we scored on rescinding the Bush tax cuts? OOPS FAIL. Or Gitmo? OOOPS Fail.
Come on.
Baud
@El Tiburon: Conservatives need Democratic rank and file to be discouraged instead of angry at Republicans, and that is the service you and people like you provide.
OzoneR
@El Tiburon:
What does any of this have to do with the birth control issue?
FlipYrWhig
I’m already mad about the compromise offer that hasn’t been announced, offered, or accepted! Fucking Obama, it’s just like him to do this thing entirely in my mind that lines up neatly with the other things he did entirely in my mind!
Lawnguylander
@beltane
But contraceptive coverage IS an issue that affects men. It’s not a health issue for me but it is a financial and emotional issue for someone like me who has a girlfriend who’s on the pill. The same is true for millions of other men, liberal or not.
Wee Bey
@El Tiburon:
Feckless bastard?
Go fuck yourself. Sideways. With a barbed-wire dick.
jwest
@El Tiburon:
“Check out the lack of perp walks or any serious investigations into this.”
The fact that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd are walking around free today only encourages more of the same malfeasance.
Southern Beale
Here’s the compromise, it’s actually looking good from what I can tell.
The mandate was shifted to insurance companies from employer. Now all insurance companies have to provide contraception prescription coverage. Religious institutions won’t have a choice of insurance plans with or without it. They’ll ALL have it.
That’s how it looks to me.
OzoneR
@El Tiburon:
You want to at least try to stay on subject? Good God.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
They lost their battles in Europe centuries ago. Expelled completely from England, Scotland, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and northern Germany. Hunted like the vile dogs they are in Revolutionary France. Even in Italy, they’re ignored. Spain held on for a while, but Juan Carlos did them in. They’re not even welcome in Ireland, of all places, anymore.
The US and the third world are all they’ve got left, and they’re in deep trouble here.
FlipYrWhig
@Southern Beale: But what about Catholic insurance companies! Their holy rights are being abridged!
Bulworth
@jurassicpork: Ha!
Chuck Butcher
@Baud:
If the Democratic rank and file are discouraged I doubt it has much to do with comments on this blog. It might have a whole lot to do with outcomes. There are a lot of directions to point fingers in that regard.
Southern Beale
@FlipYrWhig:
Are there Catholic insurance companies? Anyway, they ALL have to have it.
geg6
@El Tiburon:
Oh ferchrissakes, stuff a sock in it. Nobody is more infuriated by the Catholic Church and its white males or by the games being played with women’s lives than I am, but you are just tedious. This isn’t about you and your endless litany of Obama sucks.
GregB
Holy American Emporer Santorum is on my tv screen now. This is one angry man. He’s a horror.
He’s the type of religious zealot that will do very bad things if given a lot power.
Rome Again
@Southern Beale:
Well since we know how it’s going to eventually play out, can we NOT live through it and just say we did, please?
beltane
@FlipYrWhig: I’m not at all mad at Obama. I am absolutely livid at the Catholic church, which my parents went out of their way not to raise me in, and I’m furious with the Catholic “liberal” punditry who are nothing more than a fifth column for a right-wing social agenda. Shame on them!
Tom W
@geg6 clearly doesn’t care about healthcare for the poor. Which is cool – tough to be up front about stuff like that.
@Rome Again: I agree they’re mostly secular, but it would also be catastrophic to the fragile healthcare system held together by struggling nonprofit hospitals to suggest they go out of business. (Especially for a non-issue ginned up by the right, when 98% of Catholics actually use contraceptives and most healthcare plans purchased by Catholic institutions cover them).
@Tom65: I totally agree.
Kay
@El Tiburon:
We’ll agree to disagree. I don’t believe that Obama would somehow “get credit” from his critics if he somehow met the amorphous “fought but lost” metric.
I think you’re all about the winning, and that’s not reality to me.
He wins some, and he loses some, like every other human being on the planet who actually takes risk.
Baud
@Chuck Butcher: It’s not just this blog, it’s all the blogs plus the vapid establishment media, in addition to all the conservative voices that to many liberals internalize.
ETA: I didn’t intend to blame this “blog,” rather some of the commenters on it.
beltane
@Southern Beale: From what you wrote it actually looks like the compromise is better than the original plan.
FlipYrWhig
@Southern Beale: I was just being goofy. In theory there could be Catholic insurance companies, Catholic banks, all that shit, squawking for faith-based exemptions from the law.
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane:
Vermin like Tweety, Dionne, and Shields can’t feel shame.
Chuck Butcher
I”m perfectly willing to let the President make his case before I start deciding what I think about it.
Rome Again
@Lawnguylander:
How DARE you be doing the wild thing with an unmarried woman and expect contraceptive coverage to keep you child free? :P
/sarcasm
Kay
@Southern Beale:
Snicker, snicker.
Little shot at church health care executives and lobbyists there :)
OzoneR
@Kay:
and I’m not even sure this is a loss. He basically took the decision out of employer’s hands and into the hands of the woman getting the insurance.
Some concern about whether or not it increases cost to the consumer, but that’s a problem we’re going to have to tackle anyway if we want single payer one day
shortstop
@El Tiburon:
As opposed to blathering endlessly, tangentially and implacably because you’re committed to only one real goal — nursing your constant sense of grievance. Hey, we get that this is an addiction for certain types, but lord, you’re more tedious than the church leadership, and that’s going some. Now I’m back to tuning you out.
@Villago Delenda Est:
Unfortunately, their current business plan focuses on third world-based growth, and I worry about the levels of exploitation there. Rome likes to pretend that its pedophilic priests in the U.S., U.K., Europe and Australia were reflections of first-world libertinism, but I suspect the amount of priest-perpetrated child rape going on in Latin America and Africa, where most parishioners are too underresourced and too dependent on the church’s charity to make noise about it, would make first-world abuses seem restrained in comparison. Things are starting to leak out in Asia now, so perhaps some of these other places aren’t far behind.
Emma
@Southern Beale: If this is the actual “compromise,” Obama has just bypassed ALL religious institutions completely and institutionalized contraceptive coverage into healthcare coverage. Go, Mr. President!
FlipYrWhig
@beltane: I don’t think the Catholic liberals put nearly enough thought into this. They accepted the “religious liberty” framing far too readily.
Hoodie
@OzoneR: Nothing. Some just can’t get their heads around the fact that Obama has to play a game in which there are a lot of players that have game. If he doesn’t always win, he sucks, just like Tom Brady sucks because the Patriots lost to the Giants.
Lawnguylander
@FlipYrWhig
You should reflect upon the biblical allegory of Lucy and the Football. You keep getting preemptively outraged about various cave ins that don’t turn out to be cave ins after all. I’m telling you, bro, you’re going to end up flat on your back looking up at the sky. Just like all the other times.
Joseph Nobles
Just heard that the “accommodation” is that insurance companies will contact employees apart from the religious-affiliated organization and offer a family planning rider for free.
Wee Bey
Didn’t we get everything we wanted?
Every woman with insurance will get birth control at no additional cost, right?
Rome Again
@beltane:
Can we add the liberal Catholics who are buying into this “it’s unconstitutional” crap? I’m seeing a lot of confusion on this issue. The ratfucking operation is working, unfortunately. I’ve lost two people who I think are very special as friends over this in the last six hours.
shortstop
@Chuck Butcher: Ass kisser!
That was a joke. I felt I might need to explain that.
mcmullje
I don’t understand the apathy of women on this subject. I would have thought that there would have been a similar groundswell of support for Obama on this as there was against the Koman BS.
Why in the world are we letting the MEN take the lead on this? Why are we allowing an institution who marginalizes woman and protects child abusers have any say at all when it comes to birth control?
It makes me so tired and dispirited. I am an old lady who was raised in the Catholic Church and I’m so sorry for the years I lost believing their debilitating, frightening, paternal bull shit.
FlipYrWhig
@Lawnguylander: Any time I’ve sounded that way, I’ve been spoofing. I guess not well enough!
Dan Carmell
If I read Kay’s excerpt correctly, the new hospital chain will be called Dignity? That’s pretty hilarious, as the several decades old association of gay Catholics (they march in the parades, which is how I know this!) is called Dignity! And I’d say they have a better right to the name than these money-grubbing hypocrites in from Catholic Healthcare West.
Baptized and confirmed in the Catholic church, renounced all that nonsense at age 15.
Dan
Rome Again
@Joseph Nobles:
Damn, now the evil people who take contraceptives don’t even have to pay for their sins at all! (just kidding)
Kay
Now I guess we see whether the bishops, their lawyer, and media accept the President’s offer on women’s health care in the United States.
I’m on pins and needles here! I wonder what they’ll allow hundreds of millions of the peons to get!
Maybe Lawrence O Donnell will counter with the bishop’s lawyer’s demand!
curiousleo
I’m shamelessly stealing some of your writings, Kay, and using them in my own discussions w/ people I know who are convinced this issue is religious freedom and not equal employment law.
Chuck Butcher
@Baud:
Horseshit. It is fucking outcomes. None of the shit your proposing has any resonance minus outcomes.
Without the 07 Crash there’s no OWS and that dialogue that was relevant for a lot longer than just since then wouldn’t be happening. Outcome. You go ahead and pick your example and there was an outcome preceding it.
Guster
@Rome Again: Ask your friends why they believe that a secular person who works at a Catholic hospital doesn’t deserve the same benefits as a Catholic who works at a non-religious hospital. I’d love to know what they say.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@El Tiburon: My history is a bit shaky, but he didn’t want to rescind them on the bottom 95% due the economy being in the shitter. As for Gitmo, it wasn’t the other side that screwed him.
mistermix ... World Peace
@Southern Beale: That seems like smart politics, not a compromise.
Kay
@Dan Carmell:
The part that made me laugh is the purely legal construct that somehow allowed the church to merge with Planned Parenthood.
They’re not being straight with us here :)
shortstop
@Kay: I like you solemn and I like you snarky. Keep it all up.
arguingwithsignposts
Shorter El Tiburon: Obummer is worse than Bush! He sold us out!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@curiousleo: Churches have not religious freedom, only people do.
Mnemosyne
@El Tiburon:
Oh, please. If Obama had let the DADT repeal and unemployment benefits extension fail so the Bush tax cuts would expire, you would be here whining about how Obama hates gay people and refuses to do anything for the unemployed. You always have some excuse for why what Obama did was totally the wrong thing to do.
Raven
@arguingwithsignposts: This motherfucker reminds me of Pol Pot.
geg6
@Tom W:
Like I said, go fuck yourself. With a bishop’s mitre.
The Catholic Church does not give a shit about poor people’s health care either. It runs businesses that make a lot of money sucking up my tax dollars that are meant for health care for the poor. I can sure tell you that my tax dollars are not for sending tubal pregnancies to other hospitals to get the life saving abortion the woman needs or refusing to prevent pregnancy or other health issues prevented or alleviated by the pill or discouraging the use of prophylactics to avoid STDs. While they suck up my tax dollars, they are kidnapping unwed mothers and stealing their children and enslaving young men and women in Australia and Ireland and RAPING LITTLE BOYS in a conspiracy that envelops the entire globe. Fuck you and fuck the Catholic Church.
OzoneR
@mcmullje:
The Komen thing was different because they basically cut funding for an issue that effects every women.
This issue doesn’t effect every women, particularly women older than 50, who are most women voters.
A 60 year old woman cares about whether or not she can get a breast exam at Planned Parenthood, she may not care as much if someone who works at St. Mary’s Hospital has her birth control paid for by said hospital.
GregB
Religious liberty is the mushroom cloud of this phony fucking debate.
shortstop
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): “Churches are people, my friend!”
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@gelfling545:
This controversy was never about the issue of the church “having to pay for contraception”. It is about the Bishops trying to retain the ability to interfere with the personal lives of anybody they can get power over, both Catholic and non-Catholic in the face of changes which were going to severely dilute their leverage, namely the increasing secularization of the Catholic (so-called) hospitals, and the way that implementation of the ACA is diluting the power of large employers in general to meddle with the healthcare related aspects of their employees private lives, by cutting into the quasi-monopolistic access to affordable health insurance which large employers used to enjoy, and will continue to enjoy until the exchanges are up and running. Most large employers don’t care all that much about the latter, they have other priorities like making as much money as possible, but the Bishop do care; toying with people’s private lives is a large part of their mission statement.
The general council of the USCCB said that if he owned a Taco Bell, he should be able to dictate his employee’s access to contraceptive care health insurance. This isn’t about issues of conscience, it is about business owners being able to exercise tyranny over the lives of their employees under the cover of religion.
FlipYrWhig
@Rome Again: That’s why I keep trying to push the word “worship” into the conversation. Contraception may be anathema to Catholics, doctrinally speaking, but it’s not a matter of _worship_ when their church’s view conflicts with the law. Only worship is constitutionally protected, as I see it, but IANAL.
liberal
@Villago Delenda Est:
Not necessarily in a good way—I thought their number one trouble was competition from the evangelical crazies.
Villago Delenda Est
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
This.
They overplayed their hand when this dumbfuck said this.
mcmullje
@OzoneR: I disagree in that I am a 67 year old woman, but I have a daughter in her 40s and three grandgirls. I care deeply about whether or not they have access to birth control.
Rome Again
@Tom W: I wasn’t suggesting that they go out of business. I was suggesting that they keep their treatment in-house (to their own faithful and not outside the faith). There are about 75 million Catholics in the United States, that’s a large enough customer base to keep them employed.
Joel
I am convinced that it’s time to destroy the hierarchy of the Carhilic Church.
Punchy
Meanwhile, Santorum’s still a prick bastard
El Tiburon
@arguingwithsignposts:
Say what you want about that cocksucker Bush, but goddamn he would stand by his convictions, as fucked up as they were.
Why don’t you tell me again the Big Fight Obama is doing for middle America? The rich keep getting richer and the rest of us keep getting it in the ass. Oh yeah, my two kids can stay on my insurance (if I can afford it) until age 27. AWESOME!
Oh, and Lilly Ledbetter. AWESOME!1!
geg6
@El Tiburon:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/planned-parenthood-approves-of-contraception-compromise?ref=fpb
Butthurt FAIL!
arguingwithsignposts
@El Tiburon:
Bullshit, Bush did whatever his handlers told him to.
Kay
@curiousleo:
Honestly? The religious freedom argument doesn’t have an, ahem, factual basis.
It’s lofty and it sounds good, but I don’t think it holds up. There’s a lot of law they haven’t objected to, and, as I have outlined, they’re conducting mergers all over the place when it suits their business model. Why aren’t the business alliances with secular providers forbidden? Because they put a wall up between maternity floors? Come on. If that’s their thing, it’s fine by me, but don’t claim rigid adherence only when it suits you.
Read the article I linked to at the top of the page. They were gearing up for war on family values for 7 months, and this is what they had to use as a weapon.
Baud
@geg6: Butthurt cannot fail, it can only be failed.
Wee Bey
And by elevating the issue, the Catholics just gave POTUS free time to go on television and take credit for free birth control.
Fucking Obama. God he sucks.
Chuck Butcher
@Rome Again:
If “I” need a hospital that is less than an hour away in good weather I’m fucked and I’m not Catholic.
In bad weather, that’s it – period, no fucking exceptions.
Rome Again
@Guster:
I can’t, they are no longer my friends. This issue has caused some unfriending and blocking on Facebook this morning.
4tehlulz
Oh look it’s Gitmo II: Electric Buggaloo.
Villago Delenda Est
@Punchy:
Like the chickenhawk shitstain has the slightest fucking idea what happens in combat.
I’ve got news for him…in combat, it’s your buddy…male or female…who needs protecting. Genitalia do not enter into the equation, at all.
Fuck the cowardly scum, sideways, and flood him in his own Google search.
amused
Didn’t Obama just tell the fookin’ churches to fuck off? We won, didn’t we? I can’t wait for El Dipshit to apologize for how wrong he was…yet again.
Tom W
@Rome Again: REally can’t be done – in many areas, Catholic institutions are the choice between care and no care, between near/local and far away. And of course, their patients are majority non-Catholics. And finally, if I may note it, it’s part of the liberal Catholic tradition to turn no one away. That should be encouraged, not squashed in this worthy debate.
Joseph Nobles
Melissa McEwen of Shakesville is pointing out that there is already institutional bullying of employees at organizations refusing contraception. This would do nothing to alleviate that. Protecting the ability of women to take these plans without threat of retaliation from the employer should be the next necessary step, one that puts the issue of conscience squarely back into the women’s health camp.
However, this completely removes the financial objections out of the picture. It doesn’t cost the organization or the employee anything. Will this shut the bishops up? No, of course not, because it’s never been about the money. It’s always been about keeping women under the power of the church.
OzoneR
@El Tiburon:
Just so we’re clear, we’re talking about the same guy who ran for President in 2000 telling voters “we’re not into nation building” and then went ahead and invaded two countries and tried to build nations. We’re talking about that person, right?
Rome Again
@Chuck Butcher: Or you could sign a waiver that states you understand you are seeking treatment from a Catholic hospital and will comply with the tenets of the church in the hospital’s decision-making of your care. Waivers are signed for many different reasons all the time. I once signed a waiver that I wouldn’t sue a drop zone if I jumped out of an airplane and ended up in need of medical care.
Lawnguylander
@FlipYrWhig
Yes, I knew you were just fucking around. It was I that failed to signal that I was playing along. For shame.
@Tom65
I had a similar experience in Catholic school. I was probably always destined to become a liberal but it was a couple of nuns and a few Franciscan brothers that sealed the deal for me by shedding light on the evil the Reagan administration was perpetuating in Latin America. Then JP II cracked down on Liberation Theology and I was like WTF? One foot out the Church’s door but it took me a few more years to leave entirely.
Linda Featheringill
According to TPM, reporting on a conference call with a “White House official”:
I notice that the insurance companies were not forbidden to charge the employers more for a no-contraceptive health coverage contract, since that is more expense for the insurance company.
twiffer
@OzoneR: same reason they might work at a secular or jewish hospital. it’s a job.
might as well ask why a jew would work at georgetown.
Rome Again
@OzoneR:
LMAO!
Villago Delenda Est
@Tom W:
That’s the liberal Catholic tradition. It’s an admirable one.
But it’s not the tradition of the red beanie crowd.
El Tiburon
@Mnemosyne:
AT some point you have to stop negotiating with terrorists, even if it means some hardship. We are giving these people EXACTLY what they want everytime we do this.
Make a stand. Believe in it. The American people will respect this and understand. I am still amazed that every single capitulation by this President can be excused away. Every single one.
OzoneR
@El Tiburon:
The horror!
geg6
@amused:
Heh. Why yes, yes he did. Right here, I believe:
burnspbesq
This “accommodation” somehow smells like capitulation.
If Obama had told the USCCB to stuff it, I would have been much happier.
Soonergrunt
I’ll bet that if pre-teen boys could get pregnant, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
—A Former Catholic School Student (Me)
amused
Melissa McEwen of Shakesville…
That whiner’s still around? Is she still guilting her peeps into sending her dollars so she can buy new shoes? Palin only dreams of such grift.
Xenos
Going back to Kay’s concern, we went through a lot of these issues in Boston when Beth Israel merged with Deaconess about 10-15 years ago. I think they ended up with two maternity wards, one in the old BI building (were some of my kids were born) and one in the old Deaconess building. Abortion services were an issue that took some sorting out, though… I BI might have dropped them, judging that there were several other places to do them in the immediate vicinity.
kay
I’m oddly comforted by this, because it means it doesn’t matter what Obama might have done.
They were planning to oppose him in 2012 anyway, and “religious liberty” was going to be the 2012 issue, like gay marriage was the 2004 issue.
geg6
@Villago Delenda Est:
Well, and if you’re not a woman with a tubal pregancy. Then, you’re fucked.
amused
@geg6: Also, too, Planned Parenthood and NARAL agree it’s a good thing.
Rome Again
@Tom W:
I agree, but, I’m just saying if they expect to be treated like a church, they need to keep it in church, or (as I suggested above) create a waiver that people can sign stating they understand the church is involved and will base their medical decisions on church teaching.
OzoneR
@El Tiburon:
Unless they’re Islamic terrorists, then we should negotiate with them instead of lobbing rockets in their camps, right?
Mnemosyne
@El Tiburon:
So you would have been fine with throwing gay soldiers and millions of unemployed people under the bus so you could have your Bush tax cuts expire? There would not have been a single word of complaint from you about that?
Uh-huh. Sorry, but I don’t believe that for a second given your posting history here.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’d like to believe that, but I’m willing to bet that for every person who hears about that Taco Bell comment, there are ten others who only hear about the Bishops’ claims thanks to our news media, and that goes double for the low-info swing voters who are the real target of this ratfucking operation. The Catholic Bishops have declared political war on the administration and made it clear that they are 100% behind trying to defeat Obama’s re-election bid this fall. That is especially clear now that we know that they planned this whole ginned-up outrage months in advance.
jwest
@El Tiburon:
There is no denying that liberals dominate the arts. Writing, stage productions, films, all overwhelmingly liberal and rightfully so. For some reason, the liberal mind has the ability to turn fantasy into reality.
Some are so good at it that the line blurs between the two. Some are so invested in the fantasy that the reality disappears. Why would anyone chose not to live in a world where wrong could be characterized as right or defeat be made into victory with a wave of the hand.
We on the right envy your perpetual bliss.
OzoneR
@burnspbesq:
That’s basically what he’s doing
redshirt
@OzoneR: Yeah, but you could have a beer with him, amirite?
Chuck Butcher
@Rome Again:
Are you dim? Those hospitals offer what they offer. I needed to get a sperm count for my wife’s doctor – that had to occur off premises because – well getting that sample involves a sin…
Tom W
@Villago Delenda Est: Right – which has very little actual power, as proven by the 98% of Catholics who use contraception. This whole ‘issue’ threw a little more power their way for a brief period of time…
kay
@Xenos:
I think Catholic health care businesses have now made it a much bigger issue than abortion.
The fact is, if these mergers continue, non-catholic employees are not going to conform with religious restrictions on health insurance, nor should they.
What bothers me the most is the facts were never included in this story. People actually need to know what this means for them. They can’t make informed decisions based on a fairy tale that doesn’t reflect the actual Catholic role in the health care business, which is HUGE.
No questions were asked. The religious liberty theme was swallowed whole.
4tehlulz
So basically, Obama cut the Bishops out of any control over their insurance policies on contraception.
gg Catholic Church.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq:
The boy buggering red beanie asshats are not going to accept the “accommodation”, it seems.
They want to rumble.
Give it to them. In spades.
Tom W
@Rome Again: Not a bad idea. In truth, the church religious hierarchy exerts little control over the big healthcare institutions – some, but not as much as might be expected. And let’s just say that all these hospitals have ways of easily ‘routing around’ any religious rules the medicoes disagree with.
Rome Again
@Chuck Butcher:
Well if they offer services to the secular population, that is NOT a church.
Tripod
@Villago Delenda Est:
It occurred to me that their reactions are all about shame, fear and repression. I’d bet all three of them have some church sponsored abuse in their past.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@kay:
This pretty much encapsulates everything our so-called news media has done on every story for a very long time now. The US would be a very different place today if we had a functioning news media.
Scott P.
Shorter El Tiburon: We have to destroy the middle class in order to save it.
rikryah
you rock, Kay.
thoughtful, informative posts asking the right questions.
thank you
kay
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
This was particularly bad. I shouldn’t have to go to Daily Kos to find out that there’s been a contraception rule in place since 2000. That’s ridiculous. I’ve been following this one quite closely, and there was NO information out there, outside the internet.
What do you do when someone claims something is “unprecedented”?
Look for the rule or law they’re omitting, right?
None of that ordinary work was done. They simply repeated the claim as fact.
Joseph Nobles
I’m hoping this was industrial-sized snark, spoken as it was on CPAC weekend, the high holy days for GOP castle-in-the-clouds wish-sandwich rhetoric.
El Tiburon
@Mnemosyne:
I would love to play poker with you and Obama. You both fold like a cheap suit.
Do you really think the Republican would give up the Bush tax cuts for ANYTHING?
This is your problem and Obamas: I have no problem with negotiating, but goddamn, when you have the better chance of winning (Especially when Dems controlled both houses) then you get to be dealer and you have better odds and you should be able to bluff better than the other guy.
Sucker.
Tone In DC
@Villago Delenda Est:
Late to the party on this today (I’m at work and deadlines are FUN).
How are the beanie boys not going to accept this and start a rumble (can’t even type that without chuckling, Berrigan these guys ain’t)? It’s over, the Prez went around them, right?
Anyone? Bueller?
Lawnguylander
@ Rome Again
Dude, you have no idea how deep the depravity runs. We’re both divorced Catholics, she’s not even lapsed yet but I’m working on it. Also, she works for a local Catholic hospital and her boss is a Jew. We’re like the poster couple for all that’s fucked up in Catholic America. If she were to lose her coverage for the pill, I’d probably suggest we plan a few unplanned pregnancies and then abort them to keep the ball moving in the direction of the apocalypse
Rome Again
@Lawnguylander:
I’m not a dude, but I hear ya!
kay
@rikryah:
The bishops have certainly pissed me off, so if the goal was to get me energized, it worked.
I have to insist any debate on women’s health care include 1. women and 2. health care. That Obama was the single person in this who brought those two things in is shameful, and says something truly horrible on where we put women on our list of priorities in this country.
Xenos
@kay: I agree on this… I had to go out googling on my own, and within minutes found that the Catholic Church sued NY over this exact same rule (in a NY statute, I think), and lost the lawsuit in 2002. Ten years ago.
As far as I can tell not a single journalist has discussed this awkward fact, much less asked Dolan or his press people what the hell he has been doing in the last decade since the courts last spanked his ass on this issue.
Rome Again
@Tom W:
Well, mostly I agree, but Dignity was, in part, created due to a terminated pregnancy at a Catholic hospital just down the street from where I’m sitting. The hospital lost it’s Catholic affiliation. I linked the story near the top of this thread.
Rome Again
@Xenos:
Link please?
kay
Good for her. I don’t have any beef with her, which I’m sure she’s thrilled about :)
Chuck Butcher
@Rome Again:
I don’t know what it is you don’t get. The hospital offers the services it offers and that is fucking it. If I get there and have a tube put in and go brain dead, my family will have to get me the hell out of there “alive” so somebody can kill me – whatever the hell my directive of care says. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what the hell is the matter with you, no fuckng abortion. Period.
Xenos
@Rome Again: here is a nice current discussion from Buffalo. So I have to take back some of my criticism of the press. Most of them suck, but Buffalo has a real newspaper – good for them.
Peter
@Southern Beale: If I’m reading this right, Obama just left the church with LESS ability to control its female employee’s health care, while not leaving them any room to complain about religious freedoms because they’re removed from the payment chain altogether.
He just punched them inthe eye and demanded they thank him for it. If this is a capitulation, he should capitulate more often.
kay
@Xenos:
The NYTimes SCOTUS reporter had a good piece, but how many people read that?
I don’t even ordinarily read her.
It seemed very contrived and planned to me, which is a shame, because that goes to what the public was told, and whether they were told the truth by the various players in the opposition here.
Leaving out crucial facts is as deceptive as inventing facts. There were some really glaring ommissions.
I won’t give them the benefit of the doubt next time, based on their actions here.
Rome Again
@geg6:
Thanks for reminding me of one of the reasons that I’m alive right now. Thankfully I didn’t go to a Catholic hospital when my right fallopian tube ruptured and I didn’t even know I was pregnant. I’d probably be dead right now if I’d gone to a Catholic hospital.
Xenos
@Xenos: That Buffalo News article has a nice quote from the junior Senator from the Empire State:
Xenos
@Xenos: That Buffalo News article has a nice quote from the junior Senator from the Empire State:
Emma
@Rome Again: Really? The only hospital in town, your wife is bleeding because of an ectopic pregnancy and you’re willing to agree to follow religious teaching? You buy the graves yet?
Chuck Butcher
@Emma:
You’re going to bleed to death, then. That Catholic hospital isn’t going to do an abortion.
Emma
@El Tiburon: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph on a donkey on the way to Egypt Did you apply for a job in the White House and were turned down or something? Because this is personal with you.
Emma
@Chuck Butcher: No kidding. And some of us seem to be all right with that.I notice they all have male handles.
Chuck Butcher
@Emma:
Look, you can’t make me serve steak in my hamburger stand. You can tell me how to prepare the food and how the treat my employees, but you can’t make me provide a service I don’t offer. I don’t know how you could manage that and it does mean a bad outcome in the case of several possible medical issues.
Our fucked up medical system guarantees such bullshit but I’ll ask you straight up, how damn many abortion providers are there? It is just a medical procedure but it isn’t offered.
Make no mistake, my opinion is that they are employers and they can go fuck themselves in that regard.
Rome Again
@Emma:
No, Emma. I’m saying that if someone is so inclined to sign such a waiver, they have the right to do so. Emma, I had an ectopic pregnancy (and I’ve never had a wife, but I have had a husband) and I probably survived because I went to a secular Community hospital. That doesn’t deter me from saying that if a secular person wants to seek medical care at a Catholic institution, they should sign a waiver stating they know the church is making the decisions. The Catholic hospital probably isn’t going to opt for the mother’s health anyway, as the hospital down the street from me lost it’s affiliation for terminating a pregnancy.
kay
@Xenos:
Benen really needs to do one of those media coverage metrics he does.
I would love, love, love to know how many pro-bishop people were given megaphones versus the other side. 10 to 1? 20 to 1?
I’d also like a man/woman number, because I’ll keep that in mind they next time I’m invited to discuss prostate health.
Emma
@Rome Again: I am sorry to hear that and I’m glad you’re here to say it. HOWEVER, in many places there are no options to a Catholic affiliated hospital, because the Catholic Church has gone on a merger and acquisition spree and has fingers in a great many health care pies. Those women will die and we’re letting it happen.
slag
@kay: Email him. He’s obviously a busy dude, but he may appreciate the nudge, given how big this issue has gotten in this small small world.
Emma
@Chuck Butcher: I was going to be a great deal nastier than I already am. Thank God the damn edit feature is back.
The problem with churches running hospitals is that in many instances, their religious belief place women lower in the food chain than the hamburgers in your hypothetical stand. There are areas in the South where the local hospital has a religious affiliation, we’re giving them permission to let women die. AND they have gone on crusade against people like Planned Parenthood, which are often the only alternative, which tells me that it’s not about the teachings of Jesus at all. And I am NOT willing to live by the dictates of the Vatican. Period.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
A little late, but
They might not be doing so hot in the third world either (if only because of competition from very well funded evangelical churches).
One of my friends who was a Latin American Studies major in undergrad studied how the popularity of the Catholic Church varied from country to country. Most of those countries have some sort of right-wing military regime in their past, and her conclusion was that the Church’s popularity depended on how they’d interacted with those regimes. In Argentina, for example, the Church was basically in bed with the junta – the result is that the country today is in some ways more liberal than Europe, even allowing gay marriage these days. The counter-example (I think) was El Salvador, where Oscar Romero and other Catholic clergymen had condemned the regime and stood up for the regular people… and as a result, the country remains far more Catholic to this day.
Kind of a Catch 22: the Vatican can do what alienates the people and lose control of the country completely, or they can do what wins brownie points from the public but involves at least tacitly okaying “liberation theology.”
Chuck Butcher
@Rome Again:
I’m going to repeat myself. There is no waiver because those services are not offered – period. I’ll repeat something else – to get to a non-Catholic hospital from here requires an hour in good weather and you ain’t going in bad weather.
Rome Again
@Emma: Well, I agree with you that they are gobbling up all the healthcare options they can. Perhaps what needs to happen is that they get treated like the Bell Telephone Company did in the 70’s and have their monopoly on healthcare stopped because they DON’T offer all of the options and they are allowing life to be lost due to their own spiritual beliefs (and not based on those of the patient).
Chuck Butcher
If this statement by the Pres is it, then there’s not a lot of room to complain. I’ll bet you will find after time that taxpayers are going to be on the hook for bucks when it all shakes out and the Ins Cos have their say.
Rome Again
@Chuck Butcher: Chuck, the waiver would be for ALL services. If they are a church they should be treated like a church and it should be understood that all recipients of patient care understand that they are a church and base their medical decision-making (of all types) on church doctrine.
As for your not having a non-Catholic hospital nearby, you could always move, or not.
Plantsmantx
No lie. Chris Matthews did a segment on this yesterday with John Heilemann and someone from USA Today. It was almost as if the discussion was taking place on another planet- one on which the majority of Catholics agree with the bishops, as opposed to this planet, where the truth is the exact opposite.
I say almost as if… because Heilemann started out trying to discuss the issue from the position of reality, but Matthews steamrolled him to the point where he just shrugged, as if he was thinking “fuck it”, and fell into line.
Chuck Butcher
@Rome Again:
What the hell are you on about? A waiver for what? Cripes, you already sign when you enter that they offer what they offer. I’m not going to get brain surgery there either. I might need it but I’m not going to get it.
Rome Again
@Emma:
I’m not willing to live by the dictates of the Vatican either, but if they aren’t clear on their church doctrine in their hospital and they serve the secular society, they are trying to have it both ways when they scream that they are a church organization. Personally, I’d just as soon see all of this church hospital stuff come to an end, but, if they want to remain open and serve the public, they need to define what guidelines they use. I have to admit that I knew none of the church’s position on ectopic pregnancies when I had mine. I am only thankful that I ended up not going to a Catholic hospital to find out.
slag
@Emma: Yay! We’re talking about one of my favorite topics–giving private entities so much control over our public sphere. I’m with you, Emma. This issue bugs the shit out of me, and as much of an efficiency freak as I am (really, it’s on record–in multiple places), using “efficiency” as a bludgeon against government doesn’t go over with me. Give me representative democracy and all the pluralistic values included therein over efficiency any day. Priorities.
Jesse Ewiak
@Xenos:
I’m so ready to make the GOP look more idiotic by making them attack a woman that most normal people will see as the cute mom at their PTA meeting.
Kyle
I used to work for CHW (now “Dignity Health”). There were a handful of nuns working there but they didn’t push the religion too much and was pretty much like any other secular business in its operation.
The workforce was no more Catholic than the general population and not particularly religious. I’m wary of religion being pushed on me but I had no issues with working there. This is California, not the South, so people aren’t generally aggressive about cramming their religion or religious politics down your throat.
They didn’t do abortions, but the state of California required them to allow the procedure in some of the other facilities where they were the only hospital in a geographic area.
They had a typical corporate health insurance package. Don’t remember if it specifically covered contraception but it was a standard policy with no religious exemptions.
Midnight Marauder
@El Tiburon:
Do you mean like President Obama did during the budget negotiations last year?
You are a clown.
Rome Again
@Chuck Butcher:
Really? There are some very advanced brain surgery centers located in the Catholic affiliated hospital community.
Chuck Butcher
@Rome Again:
I put up with a lot to live here versus where most of you live. So what? You act as though this is something new. I don’t want to live where you do, not even a little bit.
The employer part is my axe to grind. The hospital offerings? Well, they’re Catholics and they’re fucked up. Go ahead and ask most women in this country where the hell they can get an abortion and get back to me.
If you’re trying to get at how screwed up I thing health care is in this country … well, ACA is better than nothing but immaterial to the problems and may well exacerbate the problems.
Chuck Butcher
@Rome Again:
My county is 3500 sq mi and has a total pop of 14K of which 10k live in my town. No, there is no brain surgery going on here. I’m astonished by that…
What you have to do is hope the helicopter can get you out of here.
ET
I am so sure that insurance companies are going to LOVE this:
Now they get to be in the business of free birth control.
Rome Again
@Chuck Butcher:
You live there knowing full well that if you have a daughter or granddaughter who has an ectopic pregnancy, she probably won’t survive.
As for where to get an abortion, I hear some women use abortions for birth control, so I’m sure those women must know where to get one. As I understand it, while the availability is being challenged (and doctors who provide such services being killed) those centers still operate, just not in certain states like South Carolina (just as an example).
Chuck Butcher
@ET:
I’d be willing to bet not, if I had any betting money.
Rome Again
@Chuck Butcher: Well, that’s specifics that are unique to your local area. That’s not to say that Catholic hospitals don’t provide brain surgery, because they do.
Chuck Butcher
@Rome Again:
You know what? That is how it is for a hell of a lot of people and it doesn’t stop at that. Not living in a goddam city means a few things are what they are, including the drawbacks of living in a goddam city. I don’t have a mega-mall, either. Five cars in a row is also a traffic jam here.
Mino
@kay: You can bet Sibelius knew this. But they didn’t send her out to defend it. Why not.
Chuck Butcher
@Rome Again:
so I have to sign a waiver?
Chuck Butcher
@Rome Again:
If you’re going where I think you are with that in regard to me…
there are a lot of rude words that come to mind.
Rome Again
@Chuck Butcher:
I’m not going anywhere, I stated matter of factly that some women know where to get an abortion. That is all. I’m not sure WTF you’re talking about.
Rome Again
@Chuck Butcher:
Whatever, Chuck. All I’m saying is that if a hospital wants to rely on it’s spiritual beliefs to inform their decisions, they need to make that clear to their secular customer base.
Chuck Butcher
@Rome Again:
That block quote is you to me. The fact that abortion providers are so few and far between in very large sections of this country ought be offensive. The fact that Catholic hospitals are the only resource in large portions of this country ought to be offensive. It is an outcome of how we’ve run medicine in this country. It looks as though it’ll be a really long time before we change that.
Soonergrunt
@geg6: EVERYTHING is about him and his endless litany of “Obama Sux!”
Rome Again
@Chuck Butcher: It is offensive, but that’s the reality. What do you expect ME to do to change it for you?
JoyfulA
Our local Catholic hospital system doesn’t perform vasectomies, either, which shocked a friend who thought the problem was only lady bits.
Soonergrunt
@Emma: The President is the wrong gender and skin color. Also too, the President’s first name isn’t Hillary.
Rome Again
Chuck, you can find information at this link (sourcing provided by the Guttmacher Institute – the brown color indicates shortage of abortion providers): Visual of Abortion Restrictions By State.
burnspbesq
@kay:
“also further isolates the Bishops.”
This is HUGE. The USCCB needs to be reminded on a regular basis that they are hopelessly out of step with the faithful.
Karen
@El Tiburon:
Maybe you haven’t heard but he’s got a settlement that the banks have to pay and it doesn’t preclude further chance of investigation but nothing Obama does will make you happy so why am I even bothering.
JoyfulA
@Chuck Butcher: My experience with the local Catholic hospital is that they are forever pushing any incoming patient to fill out its living will form, which has no box to check that says, “Keep me alive as long as possible, no matter what.” And when you’ve refused to fill one out, you, as next of kin, are asked repeatedly about adding DNR to the patient’s chart, no matter how many times you say no. (This particular instance was regarding a disabled man whose stated living will was to keep him alive as long as a possibility of survival of just one toenail remained. He survived to resume good health, but only because I insisted he be put and kept on a respirator after he developed pneumonia.) I was resentful of treatment that put me in mind of euthanasia.
I encountered no such treatment at our local secular nonprofit hospital beyond a question at admission regarding the existence of any living will or power of attorney they should be aware of.
Xenos
@Karen: Like a modern update to Ouroboros, the shark jumps himself.
Berial
I still don’t understand why this is a ‘firestorm’ and being covered as such. This whole thing should boil down to one question:
If the answer to this question is ‘yes’ then you can have a exclusion.
If the answer is ‘no’ then you don’t. I don’t care if you get all your funding from a church, if you AREN’T a church then you DO NOT get special consideration. Why is this confusing?
Lurker
@El Tiburon:
As a woman who’s been rejected three times by three different health insurers for health insurance for her preexisting condition, I assure you that the Affordable Care Act helps me and has been helping my friends and family.
As a married woman who paid $1000 last year for her Nuvaring prescription, I approve of President Obama’s accomodation to ensure that all employer-insured women will have access to birth control, not just lucky women who can afford to pay for birth control out-of-pocket.
E.T., I am not interested in emotional satisfaction. I want practical results. President Obama delivers those results. I will vote for Barack Obama this November, and I will continue to donate $$$ to his campaign.
OzoneR
@El Tiburon:
Oh, you’re delusional, now it makes sense
Samara Morgan
c’mon choppah.
less us battle.